Jeff Vrabel: Another 2008 retrospective

Monday

Dec 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMDec 29, 2008 at 1:10 AM

Listen, I know you're tired of year-end retrospectives. If you're anything like me -- which, unless you're eating Apple Jacks right now with a fork, you're probably not -- you've been slugged in dull fashion with dozens of them already, and 2008 hasn't had the good graces to even leave yet.

Jeff Vrabel

Listen, I know you're tired of year-end retrospectives. If you're anything like me -- which, unless you're eating Apple Jacks right now with a fork, you're probably not -- you've been slugged in dull fashion with dozens of them already, and 2008 hasn't had the good graces to even leave yet.

I know these pieces are routine and obvious and obligatory and they assume that most people have forgotten that the preceding months have been pretty swell for Barack Obama and Michael Phelps. And I know that the ability to successfully purchase a URL is now the sole prerequisite to publishing lists of The Best Everything of the Past Year, a pursuit occasionally indulged in by people who like putting things in lists that do not go in lists.

But trust me when I say there's a very good reason: We totally need to sell commemorative editions. If there's any way you could buy like 12 of these papers right now, I would so be your friend for life.??

Besides, it's not like we're falling over ourselves to write these pieces either; it's actually totally out of our hands. You may not be aware that we newspaper writers are actually required by federal law to furnish, at the end of each calendar year, some form of year-end nostalgic retrospective article or column.

That idea was first conceived by President Calvin Coolidge, our most alliterative president and also the first person to go on record with a Worst Album Covers of the Year list (of course, he did that in 1923, so it's basically just a series of shots at Glenn Miller and Guy Lombardo, both of whom were pretty gnarly dudes). Historians note that this is the only important thing Coolidge ever did, though he's also occasionally credited with penning the nation's first list of Most Shocking Celebrity Breakups.??

So you can see how the year-end thing is out of our hands. Frankly, if we had our druthers, which have been in steady decline every quarter since mid-2006, we'd just go about our business this week. And I need to fulfill my Coolidge-ian requirements with something, but my options are limited.

I can't do a list of movies, because thanks to the cinematic interests of my most frequent movie companion, who is 4 and failed to share one bit of my enthusiasm for "The Dark Knight" ("Why does this movie have 12 endings, Daddy"?).

So here's my list of the Best Movies I Saw in 2008: 1. "The Polar Express"?2. "Peter Pan"?3. The “Winnie The Pooh” episode in which Tigger's a train robber but it's all, like, a weird dream, or something.?4. The home movie where Jake hits Daddy in the head with a ping-pong ball and about loses his damn mind in psychotic hysterics.?5. "CSI," which is of course a TV show, but if you watch like three episodes in a row it's close enough.??

So here's what I've come up with: In 2009, I think we should all resolve to be not quite so dumb.??

I don't mean dumb as in walking-directly-into-a-closed-sliding-glass-door dumb, because frankly I have made that resolution each New Year's for the past 33 years, and I don't think it's ever coming true. So I am this year tabling my annual pledge to not do things like pour water into a coffee maker that is pretty clearly already on, resulting in the delightful sight of slightly brown water streaming out of the coffee maker while I stand there, watching water pour out of the coffee maker, while continuing to pour water into the coffee maker, while staring at the entire tragic escapade thinking, "Jeez, someone should really fix this coffee maker."??

I mean dumb as in basic, ground-level common sense sort of ideas, like, for instance, not running a giant $50 billion cash-thieving scheme out of my office. I'm gonna try to stop doing that. I'm also gonna try to stop telling Katie Couric that I am a wizardress who can read 3,500 newspapers a day.

I'm thinking that if I don't have quite enough money for a plasma screen TV whose warming glow I can see in the sky from work, I might not buy it right then. I think, since I'm not actually a plumber, I'm gonna ask people to stop calling me Jeff the Plumber. I'm done trying to sell the Illinois Senate seat, because you can't imagine how much of a pain that has been. And I am definitely, 100 percent, going to start eating Apple Jacks with a spoon.??

Jeff Vrabel is a freelance writer who actually likes Glenn Miller very much, but when looking for a 1923 musician about whom to make a joke, one does not exactly have a sprawling roster of potential options. He can be reached at www.jeffvrabel.com or by e-mail at jvrabel7@gmail.com.

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